For My Brother John

The one of us who for a short while clenched
imperial power inside his elegant hands,
his birthday comes in April. Yesterday. Today
he likely sits inside God’s coastline mansion,

a shadow smiling through a picture window,
a soul not lost, but here inside me as I weep,
a man remembering the wife who loves him. Until
I read my mind this morning, I’d forgotten

the two of us together, we sound like stereo
signals spitting static through the wire. We sing
rich harmonies without benefit of practice. Both of us
worship Sinatra the Sicilian, chew loud on hard salami,

breathe in deep the aroma of books that make a man
think. We both claim to be right about everything
and wrong about everything else. Too similar, two men,
we search each other for the I each one of us sees

inside the you. Stubborn minds, dying hearts, and yet
we taught ourselves that blood can foster the unfair
expectation that brothers should do more than
love each other today, again perhaps tomorrow.

***
Anthony V. Toscano
April 2010

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